Chapter 7 - The Transom and the Gun
The ocean at zero-two-hundred was blacker than an open grave.
The water was eighty degrees, but it felt freezing against the exposed skin of my face as our Zodiac cut through the four-foot swells. The twin muffled outboards ran at a low, vibrating hum, barely audible over the hiss of the salt spray.
Ahead of us, the *Pacific Sentinel* rose out of the dark like an abandoned factory.
Her running lights were extinguished, but two halogen work lights were mounted on her aft deck, casting harsh yellow circles over the rusted iron of the stern. Through my night-vision goggles, the world was a wash of phosphorescent green.
I saw two sentries on the upper bridge wing, their rifles slung casually over their shoulders. On the fantail, three more men were shouting at each other in a regional dialect, trying to secure a thick mooring line to an approaching wooden-hulled trawler.
Jake sat in the bow of the lead boat, his night-vision monocular flipped down over his right eye. He held his left hand raised, fingers spread—*Hold position.*
He was doing it by the book. The arrogance was gone; in its place was a hyper-focused, brittle intensity.
He signaled to Cole: *Grapple.*
Cole raised the pneumatic launcher. A muffled *thump* released a titanium climbing hook trailing a Kevlar line. The hook caught the railing of the transom with a faint metallic scrape that was swallowed instantly by the rumble of the ship’s auxiliary generators.
Jake was the first man on the line.
Despite his cracked ribs, he hauled himself up the five-eighths-inch rope with smooth, desperate efficiency, using his boots to walk up the wet steel of the hull. He cleared the transom, rolled over the railing into the shadow of a life-raft canister, and raised his weapon.
*Clear.*
One by one, six operators flowed over the rail like oil. I came over last, hauling my old frame up the rope without a sound, my M4 slung tight across my chest.
We moved down the starboard companionway in a low, tight stack.
The noise of the ship’s machinery worked in our favor, masking the wet slap of our neoprene boots against the non-skid deck. We reached the hatch leading to Deck Two—the corridor that accessed the hydro-lab.
Jake raised two fingers. *Two men inside.*
He reached for the dogging lever of the water-tight door, his thumb finding the latch.
That was when the trawler’s searchlight swept across the companionway.
It wasn't a tactical sweep; the pilot of the trawler had simply turned his deck lamp to guide his mooring line. But the blinding white beam hit the reflective edge of Ryan Cole’s tactical goggles.
A shout erupted from the trawler’s deck. A high, panicked voice screaming in dialect.
"Execute!" Jake shouted, abandoning stealth.
He wrenched the hatch lever down and kicked the steel door open with his uninjured boot.
The corridor inside was narrow, barely three feet wide, lit by red emergency battens. A hostile gunman in a dirty camouflage jacket was standing twenty feet away, holding an AK-47 at waist level. The man’s eyes widened in the red light. He began to lift the muzzle.
Jake fired two rounds—*double tap.*
The hollow *crack-crack* of the suppressed 5.56 rounds sounded like a heavy staple gun in the enclosed steel corridor. The gunman collapsed against the bulkhead, his weapon clattering onto the deck plates.
"Move! Move! Clear the corner!" Jake yelled.
He was moving too fast. The adrenaline had taken the wheel.
"Morrison, wait!" I screamed, lunging forward.
Jake rounded the T-intersection leading to the laboratory.
He didn't check his low corner.
A second insurgent, lying prone behind a stack of aluminum shipping containers, raised a short-barreled shotgun. Jake was directly in the fatal funnel, his chest exposed, his rifle still pointed down the long hallway.
I didn't think about his father. I didn't think about the cafeteria. I didn't think about the thirty years of service that were supposed to keep me safe behind a command desk.
I hit Jake Morrison like a linebacker.
My shoulder drove into his left flank, hitting his cracked ribs with enough force to knock the air out of his lungs. We both crashed into the steel deck plates just as the shotgun roared.
The blast of twelve-gauge buckshot tore through the air where Jake’s neck had been half a second earlier.
The pellets hit the steel bulkhead behind us, ricocheting with terrifying, high-pitched shrieks. Two fragments caught me—one tearing through the meat of my left shoulder, the other gouging a hot, burning line across the collar of my faded uniform jacket.
The pain was cold first, then blazing hot.
From the deck, I rolled onto my back, brought my M4 up with one arm, and fired four rounds through the thin aluminum of the shipping container.
A wet thump sounded from behind the crates. Then silence.
Jake was lying beneath me, gasping for breath, staring at the blood spreading across the shoulder of my jacket. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated to black disks in the red emergency light.
"Master Chief," he gasped, his voice choking. "You're hit—"
"Get on your feet, Lieutenant," I snarled, pushing myself off him with my good arm. The pain in my shoulder made the edges of my vision blur, but the rifle stayed steady. "The laboratory door is ten yards ahead. Finish the breach."
Ryan Cole swarmed past us, his weapon up, followed by the rest of the stick.
"Breaching!" Cole shouted, planting a linear charge against the laboratory’s exterior dogging latches. "Stand clear!"
*Pop.*
The door buckled inward. The operators poured into the room, their suppressed weapons firing three controlled bursts into the remaining armed hostiles who had been trying to force the inner bulkhead.
"Secure! Hydro-lab secure!" Cole’s voice echoed down the steel corridor. "Hostages are accounted for! No casualties among the research team!"
Jake Morrison was still sitting against the bulkhead, his helmet knocked sideways, staring at the floor where my blood was dripping onto the non-skid surface.
I sat down heavily beside him, leaning my head back against the cold steel of the ship’s hull. The salt water was dripping from my pants, mingling with the dark pool between our boots.
"You cleared the corner late, Morrison," I whispered, my breathing shallow against the burning in my shoulder.
Jake looked at me, then down at his hands, which were covered in my blood. A single, shuddering sob tore through his throat—not of fear, but of the absolute, shattering collapse of the man he thought he was.
"You took the round for me," he whispered. "After what I did... after what I said to you."
"I took the round for the team," I said, closing my eyes for a brief second to let the nausea pass. "You're the officer on point, Lieutenant. If you die in the door, the stack stalls. If the stack stalls, the hostages die. Learn the lesson."
He reached out, his hand shaking uncontrollably, and pressed his combat dressing against my bleeding shoulder, holding it tight with both hands.
"I have the dressing, Master Chief," Jake said, his voice cracking with an honesty he had never known. "I’ve got it. Just hold on."
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"Good," I muttered, looking toward the open hatch where the first morning light was beginning to break across the South China Sea. "Now transmit the extraction coordinates, Lieutenant. Let's go home."
***
